


Awake

by JonquilB



Series: Apostacy [1]
Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Candles, F/M, I just couldn't leave that perfect ending to stand, I suddenly have this thing for priests, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Romantic Fluff, Smut, Vaginal Sex, We know we all want this, Wish Fulfillment, spoilers for all Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-14 22:27:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18485695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JonquilB/pseuds/JonquilB
Summary: What happened after the meeting at the bus stop. And then, in the months after that.





	1. Chapter 1

He swings his suit bag a bit as he walks, affecting a jauntiness he really isn't feeling. He knows he's made the right decision - the only plausible decision - but a significant part of him is still not entirely at peace with it. 

_All things of this world are ephemeral. It will pass._

He unlocks the door to the rectory and is surprised to find Pam still awake, sitting on the sofa with a book in her lap, reading by candlelight. She looks so consolingly solid and normal that he starts to feel more settled, except that there's still something tapping away at him and keeping him on edge, and he's not entirely sure why. 

“Oh, hello there. I didn’t think you’re still be up.”

“Just enjoying a bit of Corinthians, Father. I lost track of the time a bit.” She yawns, stretching a little. “Speaking of Corinthians, how was the wedding?”

“Oh it was lovely. Really lovely. They’re really into each other, that couple. It was nice to see.”

“Good,” she looks at him carefully, “I missed you this morning, Father. Were you out a bit early?” _Oh, that’s a bit on the nose. She’s not stupid, that Pam._

“No, I stayed away last night. Someone needed… ministrations.” Let’s not try to think about that too much, shall we? But it’s really vivid in his head again now, in a way that it wasn’t this afternoon and evening when he made his decision and resolved to let her down as early as he could manage. She couldn’t possibly have guessed what he’d actually been up to, could she? No, her face is too calm and relaxed for her to have guessed at his fall. 

His eyes take in the candles blazing around the room - there's an incredible number of them actually - and he notices they’re slightly different to the ones she usually burns. “These are nice Pam, what are they?”

“Oh, have you noticed, Father? I picked them in up in Brixton today, there was a clearance. They’ve coconut in them. I love the smell, it always makes me think of summer and holidays when I was child.”

Coconut oil. That's what it is. _Fuck._

“Thanks Pam, it’s nice to have some candles about the place.” God help him, but why in the Lord’s sweet name did she choose fucking coconut oil candles tonight of all nights? _What,_ he thinks to his divine audience, _after those paintings you dropped and bottles of drink you pushed into my hands you’ve decided to guide Pam to the discount table of fucking coconut candles?_

He chats until he runs out of normality and excuses himself, muttering something about morning's duties and needing to be fresh for them.

The hot, rich scent of coconut curls up the stairs after him as he take himself up to his room and prepares for bed. He washes, and changes, and nestles down in his bedding, then lies awake in the dark breathing slowly and steadily, trying to empty his mind. With each breath he’s thinking of lacy underwear and warm, soft skin slick with coconut oil and a few trails of his saliva. His body is responding to the memory, hardening and lengthening as he turns over restlessly, seeking some sort of constraint from the hard pressure of his mattress against his cock but finding nothing other than the urge to press into it, looking for release. 

_Oh Holy Mother of God, this isn’t good._ Some long dormant part of him has purred into life and is humming steadily away under his skin, refusing to take his spiritual health the slightest bit seriously. _I am only supposed to have one thing, and this is it. No second guessing._

A clock ticks mercilessly. The tension in his belly coils even tighter. And the whole time, the scent of those damned candles hangs heavy in the darkness. 

He hauls the duvet up and pushes his pyjama trousers down around his thighs, reaching for his cock in a way he’s not needed to for a long, long time. Think of her… think of dark eyes and red lips, slightly swollen from kissing...think of how she looked when he undid her coat and found her gleaming and nearly naked beneath… think of her mouth sliding down over him, sucking him until he thought he’d be driven to finish far too early… think of her straddling him, leaning over him with her pert breasts almost begging him to reach for them with his mouth… the slow, agonising slide as she engulfed him, inch by delicious inch… think of how he grabbed her hips and encouraged her to ride him, licking and sucking on any part of her he could reach (ah, the scent of coconut) before flipping her over and driving into her, pinning her down into the mattress and fucking her whispering how good she felt, how hard he was in her, how hard he was going to come.

His orgasm engulfs him, wringing a few hard gasps from his chest as he struggles not to make any noise. _Jesus._ His hand is wet now, gently coaxing out the last few drops as his pulse starts to quiet and his breathing regulates. _Oh bugger._

Now there's clean up, and resettling, and getting back to trying to have an empty mind.

After, alone in the dark, he whispers a prayer. _It will pass._ He will be at peace again, soon. He’s invested too much in this life to throw it all away on a sublime fuck with a woman who makes him laugh and looks up bits of scripture to question and haunts his thoughts when she’s nowhere near.

It will pass.

He doesn’t sleep for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s settled in an armchair across from the therapist, seperated from her by a low table so it feels like they’re gently sizing up one another across a games board. She’s around twenty years old than he is, sensibly dressed, with a pretty silk scarf knotted tidily at her throat. Her unthreatening mumsiness is rather offset by her forensically cool gaze, though. When she looks at him - calmly, neutrally, not unkindly - he has the uncomfortable feeling that she can see straight into him.

This is why confession is much more civilised. You don’t actually have to be looked at by the person you’re spilling your guts to while you’re doing it.

“So what brings you here today?” She has a little notepad out, and clutches a pen ready to jot down anything he lets bubble out of him.

“A friend sent me a voucher. For a free session. I don’t usually do this sort of thing, so…”

“You’re new to therapy?”

“No, no, no, I’m usually on the other side, actually. I’m, uh… I’m a priest. Actually.” He’d specifically avoided wearing anything even vaguely clerical to this session. It would have felt a bit disloyal. In his world this kind of conversation would generally be kept strictly in-house.

“Interesting.” She takes a note, looking utterly unperturbed. He suspected his brother could turn up here and confess every heinous thing he’d ever done and her face would still maintain its placid serenity. “So why would your friend think you needed to come here?”

“Because…” here we go, “…I did something wrong a while ago, and she’s the only person who knows everything about it, and I’m kind of at the end of what what my… usual support networks… can help me with, so…”

“Does your friend know your support networks aren’t working right now?”

“I can’t imagine how.” 

“Okay. So she doesn’t know you’re here?”

“No, of course not. I’ve not seen her in months. Since the summer, actually.”

“Hmmm,” she’s written that down, too. He’s not sure he likes it. At least when people are airing their dirty laundry to him, he’s not fucking writing it down. It just flows to him and through him, and is washed clean by prayer, and then they never have to think of it again. Recording it for posterity would be missing the whole fucking point. “So what is this something you’ve done?” 

Here it comes. “I had sex.” 

“Just the once?” Her tone is still expressionless, like she deals with oversexed priests all the time.

“No… I mean yes, I mean… well, it was only one night, but a few times…”

Just for a moment there’s an amused flicker in her eyes, like sunlight glinting in deep water.

“Do you regret it?”

“Fu…, of course I do, I’m a _Catholic priest.”_

“Yes, I recognise that is a complication. But do you regret it?” 

_Ooof._ “I… I don’t think so,” he pauses and waits for her to say something, but of course she doesn’t. She knows her business too well, and he’s on her turf so when she lets a silence stretch out it’s up to him to babble away trying to fill it. “I mean, it’s not just the sex - though that was, ah, y’know…” fucking incredible actually, and still occasionally popping into his head at really inconvenient moments, keeping him up at night, “But I’m still thinking about her. I’ve not seen her though…” 

But when he’d opened the voucher she’d emailed he’d felt just as excited and nervous as he had when he’d first spotted her smiling from a pew near the back of his church. “Something for the weekend,” she’d written. Such a fucking tease. He wondered if it just came naturally to her, or if was some sort of devilish campaign to cause havoc in his previously ordered life. It wasn’t even a little bit satisfying regarding her as a God-sent test of faith anymore.

Something sharpens in the therapist’s eye then, like a kestrel catching sight of something small, furry and weak, “So is this not just about breaking your chastity?”

"I'm not sure. I don't think so," he pauses, taking time to search for the right words, “No. I mean, I’ve confessed to the sex and been absolved…” _forgive me Father, I took that nine times bastard as a challenge,_ “…and it’s not happened again, so that part of it is done. We're not supposed to do that sort of thing, but it’s not like it’s never happened to anyone else before in the history of the Catholic church, so you’d be surprised how understanding the others can be…” _oh fuck, rambling now._

She looks pensively over her notes. “Do you love her?”

“Well yes.” Obviously. “But I dealt with that straight away. I knew it would be outrageous to lead her on and just have this awful, sordid affair that dragged on until I broke her heart,” _…or until I got excommunicated and she dumped me so I ended up with absolutely fucking nothing but the burnt out shell of my life,_ “…so I stopped it before it really had a chance to get going.” That’s what he’d told himself as he’d changed for the wedding, when the homily he’d been struggling with finally took on meaning and form. And it had made absolute sense at the time. Of course he wasn't going to rip everything up - that would have been insane.

“Go on."

“I know the feelings will fade if I just don’t see her - these things always do - and it will happen even faster for her. She’s out in the world, she won’t find it hard to meet other people…” he doesn’t want to think about how many orgasms she’s probably had since since their night together. _Actually, come to think of it my problem may be that despite not wanting to think about it, I imagine it fairly often,_ “…it’s just taking so much longer for me than anything ever has before.” _And self-relief has become an awfully regular habit to help deal with the insomnia_ , “Doubting is part of faith, and I am pretty reconciled to dealing with it, but lately I’ve getting irritated at people and things that didn’t bother me before. I’m not really being as good at my job as I was. I'm starting to feel like I'm not being fair to my parishioners.” 

He’d been quite demotivated lately, and was increasingly snappish towards people who really didn’t deserve it. He’d even bit a bit narky with Pam the other day after mass, and it had startled them both. Her because she’d never seen that side of him before, him because getting irrationally angry at his flock really wasn’t how his love was meant to work these days. It was yet another thing to make him feel guilty and sad, only now it was coming from the part of his life that he’d thought he’d sorted out.

“Are you are happy as a priest?”

There it is. He’s been consciously not thinking it - not since he dismissed that question out of hand before giving the homily at the wedding - and the fact that it’s been stalking him ever since has left him feeling miserable and frayed. All those years of study, all the sacrifices, all the temptations he’d resisted, all the prayers and effort and meditation, and _now_ he’s having a crisis of faith?

His vision is blurring, a mix of terror and elation swelling in his chest like it had when he’d snogged her like a horny teenager against the wall of her dad’s house. He takes one of the tissues from the box that the therapist has prodded towards him and wipes at his eyes, then covers them completely behind his hand.

She doesn’t interrupt. She waits for him to pull himself together, the minutes stretching by while the only sounds are his quiet gulps and the slow, methodical ticking from her mantel clock. When he finally wipes his eyes and opens them again, she is regarding him with sympathy.

“Could she know you feel this way?”

“God, no! Of course not, I’ve avoided her completely…” he still kept an eye out for her, though. He often feels like he might go to his window one night and see her staring up at him, ready to pounce.

“So you’ve stuffed all your feelings about this away because you’ve always been able use your faith to avoid difficult things, and now it’s stopped working.”

He stares at her, “Hold on now, I spent years preparing for this, I really wanted to be ordained. It's been important.”

“Right. But why did you decide to become a priest, specifically?”

He suddenly needs to look out the window. The sky over London is that thin, hard blue you only really get in the depths of winter. Wisps of icy cloud hover high above, pale and sheer as a bridal veil. “Because I was in a pretty bad place before I came back to God. I was a pretty horrible person; _really_ horrible. I drank like a fish..." _and I was definitely going the way of my parents,_ "...and I lied, and I cheated, and I used sex to distract myself…a lot. From everything.” Faces flash across his memory - drunken nights in bars, screaming arguments, waking up with people he didn't recognise and sometimes wasn’t even attracted to. “I was out of control - and cruel sometimes - and I was leaving carnage everywhere. So when I reconnected with God, and realised there was a way to stop all that and find a different way to live, it was like… it was wonderful. I’d found the answer. I could just stop what I was doing and actually be someone unselfish and good. For a change.” And it had been so beautiful, so soothing, to step out of the world and devote himself to the divine. To stop viewing every woman he saw as a potential conquest and to focus on how he could help them spiritually, to show them how God’s love could bring them peace and stability as it had to him.

Doesn’t work on certain atheists, he’d discovered. In fact, sometimes if you manage to bring them a bit of peace you end up completely fucking up your own.

“So you isolated yourself from your demons but not actually dealt with them, and now that’s messed up your relationship with God AND your relationship with her?” She’s nodding with calm satisfaction, like she’s just pieced together the edge of a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and though she knows she’s still got many hours of work head of her, the outline is done. “Well, that’s our hour. I think we can do some good work here, if you decide you’d like to come back,” she flips ahead in her notebook, “I have this time again next week, if this works for you.”

He’s staring at her like she’s smacked him. “Um, well sure it is, but I really can't leave the church, so…”

She closes her notebook and looks at him, hard. “Sometimes, people don’t need to settle on an answer and work backwards, they need to start at the beginning and work out how they’ve ended up here in the first place. Your world is very black and white right now, and some part of you is not dealing very well with it. I think you already know what you’re going to do, but you are not ready to accept it. So: let’s do six weeks to start,” she rises from her armchair, and on autopilot he stands and slings his coat over his shoulders as she ushers him to the door, "...and I'll send you some readings before our next session." 

As the door closes behind him and he steps out into the darkening late winter afternoon, he makes his habitual scan up and down the street and around the front gardens, just in case.

But there isn’t a fox anywhere to be seen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lo! let there be smut.

It does fade, over time. If you neglect it.

It’s been over a year since she had sex with a priest. And she doesn’t really think of him, not really. Not usually.

The first couple of months were a fucking nightmare. She’d avoided going anywhere near his church, or anywhere even vaguely associated with him. That helped, though she did find that she was affected by clerical collars for a while, which meant sometimes she’d be walking past any old church and a passing glimpse of the vicar would raise a bit of a sweat. That was embarrassing, and not a little irritating - thank God that stage was over.

She worked through it much as she had last time, when she’d had her meltdown at her godmother’s sexhibition. Exercise, work, clean living, pine nuts, bloody great skin care. Only this time with actual dates, rather than complete white knuckle abstinence or unlimited booty calls. She felt very grown up. 

There was just one night - quite late, after a boozy evening - when she’d come home feeling both horny and nostalgic (fatal combination), and in a moment of drunken madness bought and sent him an e-voucher for her fucking _brilliant_ therapist. 

She didn’t hear anything back from him, of course. That stung a little bit, but she can’t say she was actually surprised. She wasn’t really sure what she’d been thinking she was doing, either. It couldn’t possibly be ethical sending him to the same person she’d spilled her guts to for weeks after that damned wedding.

Her friendship with Belinda was proving a big part of getting over little lapses like that. Belinda refusing to see her in the “potential sex partner” category at all was chastening at first, but now that they were regularly meeting for cocktails, chat and business mentoring she was starting to really appreciate having a supportive older woman in her life. Planning on opening another branch of the cafe (a direct result of the mentoring - “scale, scale, scale,” as Belinda would say) was turning out to be a really interesting stretch of her capabilities. If cat cafes could be a thing, then why not guinea pig cafes? At least the guineas were happy to live out their entire lives in confined spaces - now that was a marketing message for the PETA types. She was learning to write a cracking business plan and manage some actual employees, and was even thinking she might one day spin off an external catering business just to keep a grip on the corporate world’s voracious demand for canapés. Really, she didn’t have time to be thinking too hard about relationships. There was just so bloody much to do.

The dates she did have were fun, though. The shagging - mostly with men, but with a few women too - was enjoyable. Keeping things ticking over. But none of it was quite... well, best not to think about it. She was perfectly content being on her own. Work was stretching her, she had quite a nice little social circle developing through her small business networking group, and the occasional extra friends-with-benefits night kept her sex life from getting too vanilla. Normal stuff really, but being “fine, actually” felt like a really big step after everything that happened after Boo’s death.

She was doing so well in general that it didn’t even especially bother her when her stepmother announced that the surrogate she’d invited to the wedding was carrying a little half-sibling. She hoped her dad was truly up for it, not just going with the flow yet again. Although, knowing her stepmother there would be lots and lots of help bought in to avoid all the “ghastly" bits of parenting for both of them, so maybe that helped bring him round to the idea of being a new father again in his late sixties.

At night, the last thing she looked at before she turned off her bedside light was the little gold statue she’d re-nicked on the day of her dad’s wedding. “Night, Mum,” she’d whisper - her little ritual - and then she’d slump peacefully into a dreamless sleep.

****

This state of relative bliss couldn’t last forever, naturally. 

The half-brother duly arrived to great fanfare, and after the first flurry of congratulations and visits she thought things were settling back down into her new normal, only this time with an extra family birthday to remember and a slightly better understanding of ToysRUs. 

Then the invitation arrived. It was so typical of her stepmother - heavy cream paper, custom printing, expensive gilt edges - and it landed with a thud on the floor of her hall one Monday mid-morning when the cafe was scheduled to be closed.

She was still rolling her eyes at the ostentatiousness (honestly, could the woman never just send a fucking email?) as she unfolded it and took in the spare, oh-so-modern typeface spelling out the details of her little brother’s Catholic baptism with tea at the house after.

_Oh holy fucking Mother of God._

****

She’d dressed very, very, very carefully for mass.

This wasn’t like the last time she attended one of his services, when she’d poured way too much mental energy into striking precisely the right level of sex appeal without being too obviously Jezebel about it. This time, she was pouring way too much mental energy into looking like she Really Didn’t Give A Fuck, Actually, But Still Looked Good Anyway.

It was one of those steaming hot end-of-the-heatwave summer days that had thunder brewing on the back of oppressive humidity, which rather buggered up her plan to wear a modest, incredibly tasteful navy sheath that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Claire’s wardrobe. Instead, she had to improvise; a plain white crew neck tee, tucked into one of those pale pleated maxi skirts that swished around her hips in yards and yards of slippery fabric, and sensible flat peep-toe sandals. _No-one can accuse me of going for the siren look today,_ she thought grimly, _my ankles are mostly hidden and there’s not even much going on for the foot fetishists in the congregation._

She’d kept to the back of the church, except of course for the bit when the family had to gather round the baptismal font. She avoided looking at his face - _nice choice of vestment today Father, hope you’re not too hot_ \- and focused on her little brother and his outraged wails when the holy water was poured over his head. _Yeah, I know exactly how you feel. Bastard, right?_

****

Her stepmother had invited the priest to the garden party tea afterwards, of course. Of course she had. As he stepped into the marquee Claire moved a bit closer to her and muttered tightly, “Er, priest alert. Are you all right?”

“Fine!” she smiled brightly, glad she’d reapplied her lipstick and was hopefully not-too-sweaty. It served her right for having confessed all to Claire a few weeks after the wedding. Her sister shot her an unconvinced look, then broke into smiles as her fiancé turned up with a plate of canapés and a couple of glasses.

“There you are dear almost sister-in-law, hello hello! So nice to see you again!” Klare swept in on her for one of his enthusiastic double cheek kisses, “I hear the food is your doing again? So delicious, so beautiful! We should get you do to our next London office party, shouldn’t we Claire? It would be almost worth us coming in specially from Finland for it!” He handed her sister one of the glasses and invited her to choose from the plate. It was very odd to see her normally tightly wound sibling looking so glowing and relaxed. Pregnancy can do that for some people, she supposed. Not to mention being on the brink of finalising a divorce to a total arsehole. It was really quite cheering to look at her, actually.

“Oh Father, you were simply wonderful this morning. That sermon was so very moving - honestly, it was almost enough to make me want to take holy communion myself,” her stepmother’s voice rang out over the buzz of the gathering.

She decided that her best strategy was to circulate, circulate, circulate. Just keep moving - like a shark - until everything wound down and she was in a position gather up her food containers and bundle them back into the zipcar to go home.

****  
It was a great strategy, and it worked extremely well barring an incident when she’d found herself in with a group that her stepmother felt hadn’t been sufficiently impressed by her personal collection of terribly interesting people, and she was suddenly in a set of introductions that included _him_.

“And this is our priest - isn’t he a darling? Though you know I do miss your beautiful embroidered robe from this morning. But I’m glad you’re here wearing your little, y’know…” she gestured at his collar, beaming delightedly round at the other guests, “I don’t think you already know everyone here…” she went round the little group, calling out identities and each axis of oppression as she went, “…and of course you’re familiar with my stepdaughter, who is almost learning to behave herself these days…”

For the first time in nearly thirteen months, she looked right into his eyes and gave him her brightest, breeziest, I’m-so-over-it smile as she reached over to shake his hand. “Well, hello Father. So nice to see you again. It’s been some time, hasn’t it?” _Oh God, touching his hand._ She can still feel the warmth of it when she lets hers drop back down.

“Yes, yes, a while. It has.” He is smiling back, boyishly and slightly disconnectedly, like he’s saying one thing and thinking something entirely different. They make small talk along with the others, their eye contact imperceptibly increasing as they chat, until she decides that she’s enjoying even this little bit of titillation far too much for someone who really doesn’t give a fuck and excuses herself to top up a platter of canapés.

 

****  
She keeps herself busy in the kitchen for a bit, plating things up and loading the dishwasher even though she knows there’s staff around to do the clean up anyway. When she tries to pop into the downstairs loo, she finds it already occupied by Jake, who’s been in there for a suspiciously long time. Huh. At least he’s leaving Claire alone. Upstairs it is, then.

Slightly preoccupied, she thumps rapidly up the stairs and bursts into the bathroom and _oh shit,_ almost straight into the priest. He’s just washing his hands, _thank Christ_ \- she quells the hammering in her ears with the knowledge that it really could have been worse - but he jumps as though a vixen had turned up.

“Sorry,” she blurts, “If you’re here I’ll just...”

“No, no, no, no! It’s fine, I’m just on my way out.” He smiles quickly and reassuringly, “See, look, I’m just drying my hands.” He gestures vaguely with a tastefully expensive hand towel. She really wishes he hadn’t changed into one of his black shirt/clerical collar combos. They really fucking suit him.

“Oh right. Good. Good.” Jesus, this is a lot harder when it’s just the two of them in a small enclosed space than it is in a group out in the garden. _Buck up. Smile. Charm. Off we go._

“Are you...” he takes a deep breath, “Um, how’s the cafe? Is Hilary well?” He’s looking into her eyes rather intensely. 

Fuck him, looking at her like that and remembering the name of her fucking guinea pig.

“Great. She’s great.” Still smiling, working up now to a top end LED everything’s-gonna-be-alright beam. “And how are you, Father? Any good jumble sales lately?”

His mouth twists slightly at that, with a flash of puckish humour.

“Oh yeah, yeah, some excellent ones, actually. Still hiring in the dodgy coconuts in for the fetes though, I'm sure I'm being judged for it.” 

He’s been moving slightly towards the door as he speaks, so she flattens herself against it so he can escape more gracefully. He moves as though he’s planning to pass her, then - right as he is at the narrowest part of the doorway, his chest inches away from hers (if she had bigger tits they’d be pressed together, goddammit) - he stops, and props one hand on the door right next to her head. Time seems to stop.

“Oh _fuck_ you,” she bursts out, “Just... fuck you, all your fucking self-control. I’ve not had a really great shag since...” 

His eyes are trying not to laugh into hers now. _Bastard._

“What, not even with what’s-his-face? Nine Times Guy?” 

“ _No,_ not even him. Especially not with him, actually. You’ve fucking _ruined_ casual sex. Do you realise how shit that is? Today? Out here in the real world people can get sex like ordering a fucking pizza. Every time you meet someone, they expect you to get straight down to some crazy position they saw on PornHub just after you’ve had your first coffee with them, and then you spend all your time trying to work out if you actually like them or if you’re just bonding over the fucking pheromones. And you’re sitting there in your fucking church avoiding it all, and I’m out there not fucking anyone as much as I’d like to because I want to try and really love someone this time. But no-one else wants to play it that way. It’s not fucking fashionable. So _fuck_ you.”

He does laugh now. He starts to shake his head, to say something, but then he stops. And then, very carefully, he cups his other hand around her face and kisses her.

It’s soft and gentle and oh-so-sweet for around ten seconds, and then he starts ramping up to those torrid, hungry, open-mouthed kisses she’s been wilfully forgetting for months. _This is such a terrible idea,_ she thinks, but he smells so good and she wants this so much she really can’t find it in herself to stop it. _And besides, why should it be up to me to stop us? I’m not the fucking priest..._

She’s really getting into all this snogging, but she isn’t so gone she misses the sound of footsteps thudding up the stairs. “Shit!” 

He breaks away from her. Quickly, he drags her further into the bathroom, closes the door behind her, and turns the key in the lock. They lean together against it, heads close, hearts pounding, trying to quiet their breathing as they listen. 

The doorknob rattles, stops, and then rattles again. “Anyone in there?” 

She finds her voice. It sounds a little hoarse. “Just me Dad. Uh... I’m just sorting some… stuff… out in here, I might be a while...” 

“Oh! Sorry darling, sorry.” He can’t get away fast enough. _Thank God for men of that generation being terrified of the even the tiniest possibility of menstruation,_ “I’ll just use the one downstairs.” 

They wait, almost holding their breath, as they hear him move away, his tread heavy on the way down. 

“He’ll have a job getting in down there, I think Jake’s been there for at least half an hour and I don’t kn...” 

“Shhh,” he whispers against her ear. He lifts his head and looks at her face, taking in her now smeared lipstick and widened pupils. He nods slightly, almost to himself. And then he tilts his head and kisses her again, very slowly and deliberately, fucking her mouth with his tongue and running his hands down the front of her tee. In this summer heat, she’s opted to leave her proper wired bra at home and is just wearing the lightest, coolest bralet from her drawer. _There has to be some benefit to having small tits._ Its barely-there silk under the thin cotton provides very little barrier to his fingers, and she can almost feel the carnal rumble in his throat as her nipples start to harden under them. 

They stand like that for several minutes, with him snogging her slowly and voluptuously while pulling her tee out of her waistband and sliding his hands up underneath to toy with her breasts. _Jesus, this is such a bad idea._

She reaches for him, but he’s sliding down and fumbling with her yards and yards of slippery pleated skirt, scooping up handfuls of it til he finds her knickers and yanks them down. Okay, crap knickers to be wearing today - nothing like the lacey matched set she’s had on last time - but at least she’s well shaved and moisturised. One of the benefits of a long self-improvement kick has been the way she’s fallen into a habit of shaving everything that needs to be whenever she’s showering after exercise, so she’s rarely caught out. Not that there’s been many opportunities to be caught out lately, but it’s good to know that if she was suddenly hit by a bus she’d be in with a chance with the paramedics... 

_Ooooh fuck. Oh yes._

He’s leaned forward and slowly, carefully slid his tongue along her clit. Any sensible concerns she might have entertained about the speed at which he’s breaking his fucking vows again desert her. She grabs the top of the shower stall in one hand and the counter edge in the other, bracing herself and tilting her vulva invitingly towards his mouth. _Oh please, please, please don’t suddenly come to your senses and stop, I might actually lose my mind…_

He presses in on her, applying a slow, grinding pressure with every stroke of his tongue until he feels her legs starting to shake. For a man who’s given all this sort of thing up, he’s awfully accomplished at it. After she comes, clinging on and leaning hard against the door - desperately aware of needing to stay silent - he pulls her knickers down further still until she can kick one ankle free, and then he stands up with hazy, darkly triumphant eyes and a wet, flushed face. 

She hears the soft jingle of his belt buckle. Then he presses her up against the door and lifts her leg to give himself better access to her dripping cunt. He teases them both, just for a moment, rubbing the tip of his cock against her as though he’s testing himself to see just how far he’s willing to go. As he enters her, they both seem to stop breathing. He slides in, inch by inch, until he’s filled her entirely. 

“Oh Jesus, God. Fuck,” the blasphemies fall easily from his lips. There’s an _ooh, language Father_ on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t quite get the quip out. Instead, reaching for some inner reserves she’s not often tapped, she meets his eyes full on and demands, 

“Are you really sure about this?” They’re both breathing heavily as they pause, his cock throbbing hungrily in her cunt’s tight embrace, “You’re not just going race out of here as soon as some picture falls and act like I’ve cast some sort of spell on you…?” 

He laughs raggedly, his fingers tightening on her hips and the handfuls of skirt he’s holding up. “Oh, fuck you, asking me that when you’ve already come and you know I can’t think of anything right now but screwing the fuck out of you,” he pulls out of her slowly, then pushes in again with enough intent to make them both gasp, “I’ve been thinking about this way too much to stop now.” He thrusts again, harder, making his point again, and again, tempo increasing until he's pounding into her and her knees are trembling and the damned door is starting to rattle. 

“Oh shit, shit, we can’t make this much noise, someone will hear us…” that seems to get through to him. He pulls out of her obscenely wet cunt and hauls her over to the sink, bending her over and hurriedly positioning her so he can re-enter her from behind, his fingers snaking round to rub her aching, slippery clit into another frantic shaking orgasm. She looks up into the mirror and the vivid intensity reflected there on his face is actually slightly alarming. 

“Oh Jesus, God help me,” he's looking completely undone now, so intent on what they're doing she's not sure anything could stop him now. His hands are clamped on her hips and he’s fucking her harder and harder, banging into her until her hips knock against the counter top. Oh God, it feels so good and he’s so gloriously big and she really didn’t think this was ever going to happen again and she really doesn’t want it to ever, ever stop. For a split second she feels his tell-tale final lengthening, when he’s so hard it’s like being fucked by an iron bar, before his face and body go rigid and she feels his orgasm spilling into her and he starts slowing down, pumping his hips in languidly decreasing waves. 

They quieten, him still nominally inside her, his arms sliding up to wrap around her torso and he bends to press his mouth gently against the nape of her neck. They stand like that for a long, slow, silent minute. She clears her throat. 

“Well. I have to admit, I really wasn’t expecting that today,” she can’t stop herself from pressing the point, again. Not with the way this went last time. She feels him tighten against her, his cheek now resting against her back and his fingers brushing gently against her waist. He takes a deep breath as his cock finally slithers out of her. 

“I was, actually. Expecting it - well, maybe not _quite_ like this," a tremor of nervous laughter ripples under his words,"...but I was hoping to see you from the moment your stepmother asked me to officiate today.” He lifts his head and meets her eyes in the mirror, a slightly rueful smile playing around his mouth, “To be completely honest with you, I’ve thought about almost nothing but for quite some time.” 

The expression on her face in the mirror is really quite something. “What? How…” this is really fucking rich, coming from him. She can feel him chuckling slightly against her back, his embrace still warm and strong as his spunk starts trickling down her thighs. 

“You know how you sent me that fucking e-voucher? Well I only actually fucking went, didn’t I?” He’s enjoying himself now, the bastard, stroking her flanks and taking in her shock. 

“So… what happened? She didn't tell you you already knew what you were going to do, did she?” 

“Something like that.” His fingers drew lazy circles on her hip bone, “I found out that I already knew I was having problems only loving one thing in my life. And we've talked about chapters in people's lives and natural endings, and I’ve come to realise that maybe you can make a decision and it's not always... final.” 

_Holy fuck._ If that means what she thinks it does, she’s not sure she wants this level of responsibility. He sees the panic flash across her face and laughs at her. “Look, I’m not suddenly going to peel out of the church tomorrow, you know. It’s pretty fucking complicated actually, I’ve got to ask to be let go, and they might not actually permit it, and then even if they do I have to ask if I can be downgraded to being a deacon, and they might say no to that as well, but I still need to find a way to keep God in my life, and in the meantime I need to work out what the other non-church parts of my life are going to look like, and then at some point during all of that we may both realise that hanging around for each other is all just a bit too much effort. So…” he smiles at her, tenderly, “…so I realise that none of this may work out. For either us. But… I can’t actually just go back and pretend that nothing happened.” His face is serene. At peace. 

He pulls back, sorting himself out and giving her space to clean up a bit. They primp themselves back into presentableness in companionable silence, watching each other in the mirror and unable to stop smiling. 

“You know,” she says, just before they unlock the door and check to see if it’s safe for them to emerge, “I think I can find it in myself to be fairly patient, at least for a little while. But I really insist that you keep a stock of those shirts and collars around for the foreseeable future.” 

He grins wolfishly at her. “Oh fuck you. I might have known you’d be specifically getting off on that.” 

She grins right back at him. He kisses her again, gently this time. And then they had back out to the tea party, pretending to have just accidentally run into one another as they emerge back into the garden. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, I'm a sucker for a happy-ish ending.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic (ever) in the whole of my long, long history online - Phoebe Waller-Bridge, what have you and Andrew Scott _done_ to us?


End file.
